Politics can make strange bed fellows. Pauline Hanson’s stance in opposing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment puts her onside with unionists, Democrats and academics. It must be an uncomfortable alliance for all concerned.
While the MAI may seem like yet another ludicrous conspiracy theory, it does seem to have been treated seriously over overseas and in Australia. And if the scaremongers are right then there is cause for concern.
In a democracy, it is important these issues are discussed and it makes us all uneasy when such far-reaching decisions are being nutted out in semi-secret by bureaucrats in Paris.
However, we are most definitely in a democracy and there shouldn’t be cause for scare-mongering or major concern just yet. After all, such an agreement would have to be ratified via the normal parliamentary processes.
What is interesting is that this big issue has been virtually overlooked by the media. Even those who disagree with Ms Hanson’s politics must acknowledge that it took her media clout to get it recognised, even if the media portrayal of her stance on Wednesday gave her all the credit for “unearthing” what had already been unearthed... and what was researched by some Internet enthusiasts who also happen to be Hanson supporters.
Mark Hinchliffe, Editor
A reader's response:
Dear Editor,
You state in your editorial (Jan 23) regarding the MAI: ‘After all, such an
agreement would have to be
ratified via the normal parliamentary processes’. Regrettably that is not
the case.
I suggest, sir, you are speaking about a system of parliamentary democracy
which you trustingly believe
exists in this country, and indeed may have existed once, but which no
longer does. Any such system is only
as good as the people who administer it. If they cease to play by its rules
in order to achieve some ulterior
purpose, no Constitution can stop them. Constitutions are, after all, only
words written on paper. They
depend for their effectiveness on the honesty and integrity of the people
entrusted with their execution, and
the people entrusted with their execution in this country are,
unfortunately, no longer trustworthy.
The recent signing of the FSIA without any debate in the Parliament might
have alerted you to the fact that
such treaties do not need to be ‘ratified via the normal parliamentary
processes’. The signing of hundreds of
other treaties with the United Nations which have effectively handed over
the political sovereignty of the
Australian people since 1983 without any debate in the Parliament, might
have alerted you further, but
apparently not. Failing that, had you read the federal government’s own
preamble to their ‘Australian Treaty
List: Bilateral: as at December 1995’, you would have read the following.
‘Pursuant to the Constitution, the treaty-making power is formally exercised
by the
Governor-General, who acts on the advice of Ministers....The approval of
Parliament is not
required for the conclusion of a treaty.’
The words ‘Pursuant to the Constitution’ are a lie. There is no specific
power conferred upon the
Governor-General (or the Cabinet) in the Constitution to sign treaties.
Where then does he get this power?
He gets it, presumably, from the possession of something called the
‘prerogative power of the Crown’. I say
‘presumably’, because it is only a presumption that he has such a power, and
Sir Garfield Barwick argued, in
the Samuel Griffith Society lectures, that the Governor General does not
possess such a power in Australia
(see 1996, Proceedings of the Samuel Griffith Society).
What is the ‘prerogative power of the Crown’? It is the last remaining
vestigial power of the British monarch
which is retained independently of the Parliament. It is the sole right of
the Queen to declare war, and to sign
treaties with foreign nations. It is exerciseable without reference to
Parliament, and the only restriction on its
use is the convention that it will be exercised only on the advice of
Ministers, in our case, the Cabinet (see
Lumb and Ryan ‘The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia Annotated’
(1974) p. 145).
It is on the presumption that the Governor-General, as the Queen’s
representative in Australia, has a similar
power, that the political and economic sovereignty of the Australian people
has been signed away since 1983
via the ‘treaty making mechanism’. We are now politically subservient to the
world government in waiting,
the United Nations, and economically subservient (the MAI will complete the
process) to global big business
and finance, and it has all been done by the Governor-General exercising an
antique power of the British
Crown.
There has been much talk about the expanded interpretation of the external
affairs power [Constitution
s.51(xxix)] since the Franklin Dam case. But the external affairs power does
not come into play until the
treaty has already been signed. It is the means by which local legislation,
giving effect to the treaty, is
enacted by the Parliament. THAT, not the treaty itself, is what is
subsequently debated. But by that time
Australia is already bound to give effect to the treaty, one way or another.
As for treaties under which no local legislation has yet been prepared, but
which are nonetheless binding, the
government’s own notes are again instructive: ‘Federal Parliament is kept
informed of the treaty-making
activities of the Government by the biannual tabling in both Houses of the
texts of treaties signed, acceded to
or ratified by the Government in the preceding six months’. Obviously the
‘government’ (the
Governor-General and Cabinet) not the Parliament, has the monopoly on treaty
making.
Yours faithfully
Graham Strachan.
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